If something has to go wrong today, please let it be...

...my bankcard getting rejected at Tesco with a massive queue of people behind me including a mummy from the playgroup who will no doubt pass on this little incident to all the others when we as usual don't make it on Wednesday. Ok, check.

There is no joy to be had in this situation, especially when my only other 'form of alternative payment' was scrabbling around in my coat pockets and purse to find £30 in change and having a shopping bill of £55. Yuck.

I had the pleasure of having to unpack the bags to find things to go back. All with a background chant of 'I want my daddy' sung in tears from Orla who wanted me to get the red nail varnish, not the green and this caused a 20 minute chanting meltdown. Well, I wanted daddy too, cause he always has cash and multiple forms of alternative payment on him, and then I wouldn't have to put the green nail varnish back along with the cake (even though I was thinking I'd need some of that when I got home to recover) and multiple other items that I quickly deemed as non-essential.

Anyway, the point of all this is that it was a breakthrough moment for me. I have often felt that I am surrounded by a peculiar bunch of people for whom nothing ever goes amiss (in the day-to-day-things-that-just-generally-are-quite-rubbish-and-embarrassing category). These people fit into my venn diagram titled I CAN'T QUITE RELATE TO YOU, and often share a little segment with the people who have perfect children who look blankly at you when you mention lack of sleep as though this is an unknown concept for them.

Now the ones that I really have no clue why I am even friends with them are the ones who fit into the even smaller segment which includes both these categories and the additional section for those who have children aged 3 and under and manage to straighten their hair, have perfect clothes and make-up, and be places for 9am. How do they do that??? The only way I could manage that is if I gave each of my children half a bottle of Medised and stuck them in the car at dawn so that I could get myself ready without 2 people helping me to lose my makeup, burn my hands as they tug the cable of the straighteners and if I wasn't a magnet for childrens food. Actually, in order to be places for 9am the kids wouldn't be eating breakfast so my clothes might be ok.

So my breakthrough moment: I started reading mummy blogs and discovered a world where people have crap things happen to them that are just like (if not worse than) the crap things that happen to me. So in Tesco I remembered that this situation happens all the time and wouldn't even make for a unique or funny blog and I thought 'ah well'. Still wish I had held on to the Madeira cake though.

P.S. the children were not dressed as elves (thankfully) during today's trip to Tesco, but it is my only Tesco-related photo, and I like it!